Sanar el mundo

Today it is unthinkable that one day the world will get rid of diseases. However, there was a time when the advances seemed unstoppable. The extraordinary years between 1840 and 1914 saw inconceivable changes not only in medicine, but also in culture, politics, and society. We learned to control pain and epidemics and found cures for diseases that until then were death sentences. It was a time of unbridled optimism, of new, exciting and heretical ideas, of unwavering faith in science and in the future. It is hard to imagine our lives today without the contributions of figures like John Snow, Florence Nightingale, Sigmund Freud, or Robert Koch, who completely changed our approach to diagnosis and treatment. Healing the World is a wonderful encounter with these and other pioneers and a journey back to an era when the railway and steamship took people beyond the horizon and the world became truly globalized. Ronald Gerste tells the gripping tale of a period in which science transformed the world, a turn whose consequences remain with us to this day. But this series of impressive innovations was cut short by catastrophe: World War I and a terrible pandemic caused by a virus, the Spanish flu, ended a story of triumph and progress with a tragic epilogue.